Madd

WASHINGTON -- Candy Lightner, who gained fame a decade ago as the founder of Mothers Against Drunk Driving, is now fighting MADD-backed legislation to tighten drunken driving standards as a lobbyist for a restaurant industry group opposed to stricter alcohol laws.Mrs. Lightner, whose 13-year old daughter, Cari, was struck and killed by a drunken driver in Sacramento, Calif., in 1980, began working as a lobbyist for the American Beverage Institute several weeks ago.The institute, which represents T.G.I.

The Carroll chapter of Mothers Against Drunk Driving kicked off the annual Red Ribbon Campaign yesterday by snipping a large, decorative red ribbon.The group also has a new office in Westminster, which volunteers said will serve as a focal point for their efforts to prevent drinking and driving, to assist victims of accidents caused by drunken drivers and to monitor the county's courts."

The Harford County chapter of Mothers Against Drunk Driving will hold its first Candlelight Vigil of Remembrance and Hope at 6:30 p.m. Saturday in Bel Air in recognition of those killed or injured by drunken drivers.The vigil, in front of the Harford County Courthouse on Main Street, will be held simultaneously with the National Candlelight Vigil in Chicago and others around the country by local MADD chapters.Harford County is the only one of Maryland's eight chapters holding a ceremony during National Drunk Driving Awareness Month.

When Kimberly Schaffel sits in the same position for a long time, her legs become stiff and she has difficulty moving them. The pain brings a vivid reminder of when she was struck by a car operated by a drunken driver 14 years ago.On Christmas Eve in 1977, Schaffel was on her way to a holiday party when her car ran out of gasoline near the Arlington Park racetrack in Chicago. As she poured fuel into the car, another car pulled from the racetrack lot and barreled toward Schaffel.The vehicle careened into her car, the impact of the collision tearing Schaffel's car in half and throwing the 20-year-old woman through the air.In the end, she suffered two broken femurs, a broken knee and nerve damage in her foot.

A Howard County woman was standing in her kitchen one night nursing her infant when a call came from a police officer on the Eastern Shore.The officer, matter-of-factly and without warning, told the woman that her oldest daughter had just been killed in an automobile crash.The woman dropped the infant and fell to the floor.Chari Stoesser, a volunteer at the county chapter of Mothers Against Drunk Drivers, relayed the incident recently to underscore the need for sensitivity in handling death notifications.

With tears in her eyes and a plea not to drink and drive, Kim Parre, a victim of a drunk driver's head-on accident with her in 1990, revealed her story publicly for the first time yesterday.The occasion was a National Drunk and Drugged Driving Prevention Month presentation at City Hall attended by Westminster Mayor W. Benjamin Brown and members of Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD).Ms. Parre, a disc jockey at an Annapolis radio station, said she is "still troubled with memory loss, and I cannot remember the birth of my child or the first words or step the child took."

The spastic arm, the shattered knee and the slurred speech are permanent, the work of a drunken driver. Look at me, Judy Kressig says, and understand why no one should drink and drive.It's a message she has delivered dozens of times throughout Maryland, and she was to deliver it at the International Candlelight Vigil for victims of drunken driving this weekend in Memphis, Tenn. But the national staff of Mothers Against Drunk Driving has banned her from the program, which has frustrated Kressig and surprised officials of MADD's Maryland chapter.

Opponents of a Mothers Against Drunk Driving-backed bill to lower the blood-alcohol level required for a charge of driving while intoxicated are pushing a look-alike measure that omits the stiffer penalties of the original legislation.The MADD-backed bill would lower the standard for a DWI charge to 0.08 from the current 0.10. Drivers who test at 0.08 or 0.09 would be subject to the state's current DWI penalties -- a year in jail, a $1,000 fine and 12 points against their driver's license.

DETROIT - General Motors Corp., a lightning rod for criticism about everything from air pollution to auto quality, has become a target for, of all things, one of its charitable efforts - its financial and political push to combat drunken driving. A national campaign, MADDatGM, has begun with the backing of 17,000 bars, taverns and liquor stores to attack the automaker and Mothers Against Drunk Driving, mostly for their successful effort to lower the national blood-alcohol standard for drunken driving.

THE BREWERS and distillers of America want you to know how much you can drink in Maryland before you'd be judged a drunken driver.It's a seasonal advisory that we can take in a positive spirit. The distillers want to protect us as we welcome the new year. If they're also after an image of responsibility, that's fine, too.The industry's Century Council will provide an "interactive bilingual mini-CD ROM to educate users on the mechanisms of blood alcohol concentration." Age, weight, sex, type of drinks and duration of drinking can be fed into a formula that shows how long it will take you to get soused, dangerous and arrested.